You might get a rueful laugh from a report in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal that was headlined “Inside the 21st-Century Gold Rush” and appears in the clear at MSN.com here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/inside-the-21st-century-gold-rush/ar-BB1mcGcO
The report says: “Worries about war, discord, and mounting government debt have fueled a worldwide rush by individuals and institutions into what Wall Street calls ‘physical gold’ — bars, coins, jewelry, and nuggets.”
Ordinary people might wonder why gold needed any adjective, much less “physical.” But the Journal presumes that the primary manifestation of the metal in the financial markets isn’t “physical” at all but something else — what might be called “derivative gold,” gold that is merely imaginary and is used to divert investors from the real thing, the better for certain governments, central banks, and bullion banks to manipulate the gold market.
Of course the Journal’s presumption is correct, but its journalism here is faulty for failing to explain why — for failing to explain why Western powers, particularly the United States, have needed to flood the markets with vast amounts of imaginary gold to defend their grotesquely inflated currencies against competition against the oldest surviving form of money — indeed, the once and future money.
Why won’t the Journal explain why gold needs an adjective? It’s because the financial world the Journal purports to cover might be overthrown if people understood why those in charge can’t let gold just be itself.
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